Languishing

So I am back.  I have had a bit of a break from my textile work, doing things that I never have time for, which is lucky, because it is very hot here and when it is hot I am not at my best.
I made some little bags for the ladies in my family for christmas

I made six of these in different colours, from recycled fabric and braids, The inspiration was a felt bag in quilting arts episode 1010, by Rebecca Kemp Brent, which used the sole plate of an iron for a pattern!  However, I made lined bags and did not embellish the panels.

I spent a lot of time with my puppy, Ruby, who is growing up fast, but has not stopped chewing everything as you can see from the arm of the chair she is sitting on, lol

I made a few pieces of jewellery.

I made some free motion butterfly wings on organza

and some more

and some dragonfly wings.

I have been working on a quilt as part of a Craftsy Course - Beyond Basic Machine Quilting.
I have altered my piece slightly, I did reverse applique with painted organza for the feather flowers and I used satin as my foundation. It made it slightly more difficult but I like it.  As you can see at the moment, I am slowly filling in the background.
I have also been doing stupendous stitching and stitch and slash with Carol Ann Waugh at craftsy, but nothing to show there yet.

I have been working on my Blue Piece for Tangled Textiles, which is due in a week.  Above are some of my blue bits and pieces - just a peek.  I am not happy with how it is going, and wish I had stuck to my first idea, but of course there is no time to change now.

I have also been reading a lot - something I hardly ever do (stories, that is, I read text books a lot).  I started reading Robert Jordan's "wheel of time" series twenty years ago and the final book was released earlier this year and I got it on my birthday, but I decided that I needed to reread all of the books from the beginning so that it is all fresh in my mind when I start the last one.  There are 14 books altogether and none of them is short, hardly any less than 500 pages and most are more, so that is going to take me a while - lol.

I have been finding it hard to get back to work, but hopefully getting back to blogging will help put a bit of discipline into my days!

Be creative every day

owls and air brushing

I have been so lax in blogging that my facebook is pretty much chockers (full) of pictures to talk about, lol.
First a little local stuff.

This is our usually lazy little creek this morning. It has been raining for a week and the roar of the water is quite loud, especially at night.  It is still a long way from flooding, but of course our house will never flood as it is on the side of the valley, quite high up.  Flooding only interferes with our access - if the bridge ever goes under, which it hasn't, even when the creek bursts it's banks.  But I thought you might like a brief glimps into my world.

Here are a few wishing owls, which I made after watching QATV 801.  Here arte a few more pictures.

They are very cute and quirky and don't take long to make.

This is a piece of fabric paper I made using dissolve water soluble stabilizer.  I saw this in QATV 503.  It is interesting, but I think I really prefer fabric paper made with PVA.

I have also been playing with air brushing, using a new mini compressor, we got a while ago.

Here is some nappy liner I painted using the air brush.  I want to use my soldering iron to create some waves for a collage.

While I was at it, I did this piece of fabric with some stencils and some fabric paint.  I think I will do this again with acrylic (which will act as a resist) and then overdye with another colour.  This might be interesting.

So that's it for today, cleared a little of my backlog. 
Here's  an inspiration for you.

for the market

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

little birdies having a little chat on my work table prior to going to market on sunday.

These little birdies were made using a modified form of  a bird design by Terry Grant on Quilting Arts TV 710.  (See more of Terr's work on the 12 x 12 site by clicking their icon in my side bar)

You know I can never stick to a pattern or a technique without thinking what if? 
One major difference is that they were done entirely by hand!
This is the second batch I have made for our local quilting group's fundraising stall.  They were so popular I had to make more!

Burned fabrics

I thought I would experiment a little with my heat tool and see what I come up with.  There are lots of places to go for information on burning textiles, but my favourites are Kim Thittichai's Hot Textiles and Quilting Arts Magazine.

Here are a selection of synthetic, from lace, to felt, to lame'

Below, I have traced around a motif in some lace with the straight tip on the heat tool.  It creates a sealed edge that can be appliqued without fraying.

You can trace/cut around quite complicated motifs this way.

It works extremely well on Lutradur.

This lame' frays very easily, but  the shape burned out will not fray.

The same is true for this satin.

You can also use some of the other heads to emboss, or burn patterns into fabric.  This works really well on velvet. Above tou can see a flat circular head and a nine patch sort of head.  If you want to emboss instead of burn you need to be able to lower the heat on your tool.

Here are some applique leaves and motifs cut out.

1. from very thin chifon/organza
2. from plastic garbage bags
3. lame
4. a shot satin
5. silk
6. several layers og garbage bag plastic (seals them together)
7. Lace
8. crushed velvet
9. satin
10. an embossed satin

Using the circular head on plastic at a hot heat, then layering two colours

 Cutting out bubble wrap then melting the bubbles over a foil base

In these two lutradur samples, I have cut out a design with the straight tool, and burned with the shape tools.

In this satin sample, the melted fabric made strands as I pulled the tool away.  I definitely need to repeat this.

In this lutradur sample layered over a purple background, the left circles went totally through, whilst the right citcles only went halfway forming a fine lace.  I liked that.

In these to samples I was experimenting with getting the leaf to stitck to the fabric underneath.  It wasonly a partial success.

These two are embossed crushed velvet.  because the velvet was black, It is very hard to see the embossing here, but it is very visible when looking at it in reality.

Here I have both fully burned and partially burned lame.  The sample on the right is burning lame onto felt, which requires a higher heat to melt

If you look carefully, you can see the embossed circle on this shot satin.

Lame and organza on felt.

Here is the large lace motif burned out.

These textured satins were perfect for cutting geometrics out.  This would be a great addition to some cut work.

These two examples on black silk (which also needs a higher heat) were some scraps of fused fabrics I had.  I was not sure if it was a good idea to use them, but I am glad I did.  Since these were sheers, I put a little angelina between the two layers, I wanted to see if I could trap the angelina in between.  It worked, but I also discovered something else.

If the top fabric has fusible on the back, when you burn around it, you also fuse it to the background (so long as the background has a higher melting point).  Wow!  I found this such and exciting discovery that I tried a lot of fused fabrics on some brocade (below).

 

1.  grey satin
2. green garbag plastic
3. white metallic organza
4. textured satin
5. loose weave organza
6. velvet ribbon
7. lutradur

Now let's see who is thinking out there.  There is no way I could have ironed the fusible on to some of these fabrics, so how did I do it?
I simply put a piece of fusible larger than the shape (without the paper backing), between the two layers before I burned the line and it worked! So not only does this fuse the fabrics to the background, you don't have to iron any fusing first.
I would not trust this to be permanent, since the fusing is only a fine line, but for me it was a great discovery.
Using this method, you could have beautiful synthetic appliques (which are usually fiddly because the fabric is slippery, and can't be fused because the fabric will melt).  The appliques would easily stay in place for stitching, and because the fusible is not ironed in the centre, they would stay soft.
I will have to experiment with washing after stitching to see what happens to the unironed fusible, but my guess is it is so fine, it would not bea problem.
WOW - I feel like shouting Eureka!   I am most certainly going to use this in my secret activity that I told you I would tell you about soon.
Did you hear that girls?  Here's my first technique.

So excited.  No quote today
Oh and I got the book I won from workshop on the web yesterday

http://www.d4daisy.com/mandi.htm

I am really enjoying reading it and looking forward to doing the free online tutorials that go with it.
Vicki